Luis Meléndez - Still Life with Oranges and Walnuts [1772]

Luis Meléndez - Still Life with Oranges and Walnuts [1772], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In addition to the oranges and walnuts, on the wooden shelf there are chestnuts, a melon, earthenware jugs, a small barrel and some circular and oblong boxes. The jugs probably contain wine, while the barrel possibly contains olives. The round boxes were normally used for cheese, while the rectangular ones were used for sweets, such as dulce de membrillo, a thick quince jelly eaten in slices. 

Luis Egidio Meléndez de Rivera Durazo y Santo Padre (1716-1780) was born in the Spanish dominion of Naples; his family moved to Spain soon after. His father, uncle, brother and two sisters were all painters. His father, Francisco, was instrumental in founding the Royal Academy in Madrid in 1744, and his son's self portrait of 1746 shows him as a promising student there. Following a dispute, both father and son were expelled from the Academy and turned to miniature painting in the 1750s. 

The series of about 100 still lifes for which Luis Meléndez is remembered dates from the last twenty years of his life. Often planned in pairs, they range from large compositions, which sometimes incorporate landscape settings as in Flemish and Neapolitan still lifes, to smaller and more intense paintings, usually of a vertical format, that are more characteristically Spanish.

[Oil on canvas, 61 x 81.3 cm]